4min chapter

The Infinite Monkey Cage cover image

Australia’s Scary Spiders

The Infinite Monkey Cage

CHAPTER

Are You a Problem Solver?

There's a very famous jumping spider, but a name of Porsche. She can detour and work out escape routes. This is really problem-solving behaviour. There's also learning. Spine has actually learned that there's always damage on the right-hand side so they start shifting to the left-hand side. They exhibit something that looks like REM sleep. A researcher in Germany had very recently discovered this,. all animals sleep, or have some sort of sleep state. And if they're REM sleeping, like us, are they dreaming? And what might a spider be dreaming? It's wonderful idea as you said. We have some samples... Well, they're not living spiders,

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Speaker 1
What they don't do is they don't wait on your ceiling until you fall asleep and abseil into your mouth. So, that's not what they do. But they are good problem solvers. There's a very famous jumping spider, but a name of Porsche. And she can detour, she can work out escape routes. She can really perform really complex tasks. This is a specific individual. The species is called Porsche. OK, well, I guess. You thought that was going to be our special guest. Please welcome all the way from that eve over there in Porsche. So, this is really problem-solving behaviour. There's also learning. So, with learning, meaning taking an experience and learning from the experience, they can learn to build better webs, for example. So, many of you walk through your garden and there's a spider web and you keep on walking through the web. Spine has actually learned that there's always damage on the right-hand side and so they start shifting to the left-hand side. So, that's a sign of learning. Thinking of webs, I remember seeing some research that was done where giving spiders different kinds of things like coffee and cocaine and LSD. Yes, I saw those pictures. And then seeing the kind of webs that they make, I wonder what we can imagine for being that process. You can see them online. It's absolutely amazing. The different kind of stimulants, etc. that you can give to a spider, and how it will affect their webs. This is like the caffeinated spider making its webs super quick. The caffeinated one was one of the worst webs, wasn't it? Do you remember? Like, that was the surprise to me that the LSD spider did better than the coffee spider. Yeah. The coke spider said, I've done the web. You've only done a web at all. I've always said that, but I'm really great at doing webs. Much better than that LSD spider. I'm fine. I'm just doing the web. I'm going to start a business doing webs, actually, and I'm going to be haveshed webs and have a really, I'm going to have eight employees doing my webs. When we're talking about learning, the other thing is that they're really good at doing is finding profitable places to build those webs. So even though we've just bagged them out for being a bit thick compared to the other spiders, they are good at finding good places to build. If you've got a light outside, you'll often find spiders, well, spiders spiders. So now that's the surprise. To be fair, we were talking about spiders as well as... We were talking about speed to spiders, so you're allowed to talk about... The speedy spiders. Yeah. But Marielle's point about those ground-dwelling spiders with the big eyes, big forward-facing eyes, being super smart is a really fantastic thing. If you've got a jumping spider at home, spend some time hanging out with them watching it. It will be there watching you. It will literally walk across your table, turn and look at you, and then keep walking. They're incredibly engaging little dudes and girls. And you said, Marielle, those are his. So they exhibit something that looks like REM sleep. A researcher in Germany had very recently discovered this, so all animals sleep, or have some sort of sleep state. And she watched that little jumping spiders work. She's suspending themselves on the threat at night. And then as she kept them watching them, they started twitching like your puppy or your cat twitches in sleep. And then she filmed that, and so there were sort of uncontrolled twitches, also the spinner-heads twitching. And then when she filmed the eyes, she could see that the eyes were moving as well in some uncoordinated ways, of very reminiscent to REM sleep. So, you know, the question is, are they REM sleeping? And if they're REM sleeping, like us, are they dreaming? And what might a spider be dreaming? It's a wonderful idea. Let a spider can dream potential, I mean, speculative, as you said. Yeah. We have some spiders, actually. We have some samples. Well, they're not samples, they're living spiders. Oh, wow. That is actually not in a box. Oh, hang on. Brian, do you want to swap seats? It's actually... I've been assured. To be fair, Brian, it is in a box. It's just that the box is not fully closed. No, no, no. So, we have a very large spider in a very large web. That's not loud. To me, it's loud. Ha-ha-ha.

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